NSW LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS

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Intro

Life is about constant evolution. Always better today than we were yesterday.

Scott Williams

Welcome to 'The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday', the official Navy SEAL podcast. I'm your host, Scott Williams and with me today is Andrew Dow, who is a retired SEAL and runs the SEAL Officer Selection and Assessment Program at Naval Special Warfare. And also Mr. Rod Olson, who is well, let me tell you a little bit about Mr. Rod Olson because he has quite a background. He is the CEO of Coaches of Excellence Institute and Coach O Consulting Group. Known as a "coaches coach", Mr. Rod Olson is an author of three books and a specialist on 21st century coaching and leadership following a 17-year football coaching career that included coaching positions at Oklahoma State University, and three-time national champion Appalachian State University. Rod has spent the last decade training and coaching leaders from Fortune 100 companies to the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League, and the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball. Currently, Rod mentors and coaches major commanders in the NSW community, which is part of what we'll talk about today, and also trains both SEAL and SWCC instructors quarterly at Naval Special Warfare. Welcome. Mr. Olson. How are you doing today?

Rod Olson

Good to see you guys. How you doing, Scott? And it's an honor to be with you guys.

Scott Williams

Thank you. So, you know, I was taking a look at your background. And of course, I had heard about you and your work at NSW. What we're going to talk about today is what you do at Naval Special Warfare, how it impacts how our leaders think here, and maybe some takeaways for the candidates that are thinking about coming into Naval Special Warfare either as a SEAL Officer or as a SEAL operator, or SWCC operator. And the first question I have for you is simply how did you become involved with Naval Special Warfare?

Rod Olson

It's a great question. And the genesis of kind of my arrival here is pretty unique. When I was working with the Pittsburgh Pirates, one of the things that we were fortunate to have was an owner that wasn't willing to spend a lot of money. So, what we had is we had to focus, we had really focused on development. And so, Kyle Stark, Neal Huntington, the GM, the assistant GM, what they would do is, I was hired to work with them to do coaches development, to help their coaches be the best they could be technically, tactically, schematically and then also personally and professionally and emotionally and spiritually. The whole deal. And what ended up happening is we started having think tanks where we would bring in people from all over the world quite frankly, that were experts on human performance, especially on development of human performance. And we'd bring in everything from, you know, SEALs to NSW, to national championship coaches, to sports psychologists, and just a ton of different people. Well, one of those people happens to be Gary Denham, and Gary Denham used to run the IQC course. He's a retired Navy SEAL, he's a DEVGRU guy, also for a long time. You'd be praying for Gary, he's battling stage four cancer, but he's doing great. And Gary also brought with him a young man named Keith Davids, who at that time happened to be the Commander of BTC. And Keith and I spent a little time at the think tank. And Keith came to me and said, "Man, I really", once he found out what he did, "I think my guys would relate to you. And I think our guys would, would really benefit from giving them more coaching tools". And he said, "What do you think about training our instructors?" And so I came out, we did some kind of test classes and test courses, the guys seemed to like it, and one thing led to another and that was roughly almost 10 years ago, little over nine years. So since then, I've been training instructors quarterly and at all different phases. In fact, I'm out here in Virginia Beach. We're actually doing our first Virginia Beach instructor training, we're at Advanced Training Command. So we're working with these guys a little bit and it's just fantastic. But a great honor, a great privilege, and I seem to relate to these guys. The other neat thing that happened, quite frankly, after about roughly three or four years, Admiral Davids came to me again and said "hey, you know, I don't think there's a lot for our major commanders. And when I've talked to some other guys and I know you do a lot of executive coaching Rod and would you be willing to work with some of our major commanders, if they're open to it, where you coach them on a monthly basis for nine to 10 months and, and help them again, personally, professionally and anything they need." And he said, "you know enough about our community that you have good just core knowledge of what you guys deal with, but at the same time, you're not in it." And that's, that's a benefit. Because I don't have a dog in the hunt other than I just want to help guys be the best they can and help with their families and professionally, but also I know enough about the community that I can be helpful and familiar with. So that happened and then last thing, and I'll shut up here the last thing that happened was roughly about three years ago with Andrew is very familiar with this. They came to me when they're just in the infant stages of the NLAP program with the Navy Leadership Assessment Program and they said, "Hey, we've heard a lot of good things and we'd love to get our guys some coaching, you know, what do you think would be the best way to get them some coaching during the NLAP week". And so we arrived at a deal where I've been geez, I don't know how many overlaps I've done now, dozens and unfortunate to be a part of that, even at the inception. And even to today, where I work with Ken Marra, and all those guys, and I teach for a couple hours on leadership. And then I meet with every candidate as they roll through in a one on one so fortunate to be doing quite a bit in NSW, but at the same time in different facets, which is kind of unique. And so yeah, just a huge blessing. And that's the genesis and where we are today.

Scott Williams

Just to bring folks up to speed Keith Davids is now Rear Admiral Keith Davids of Naval Special Warfare Command, he's leading our community. And NLAP is the Navy Leadership Assessment Program, which is a program that's tailored to assessing and selecting our next generation of leaders within NSW. Now, Rod, you have a wide variety of clients. There is everything from business sector professionals, educators, parents, government. When you look at Naval Special Warfare, which is definitely its own special group of people. How do you tailor your training to this group of professionals?

Rod Olson

That's another very good question. But, you know, as we look at leadership as a whole, you know, I've got a saying I don't believe there's anything new under the sun. All right, you know, and Andrew can attest to this, he's been in a lot of great rooms with a lot of great people, and at the end of the day, you know, people are always begging for new things and everything else and we talk about whether it's business, sport, or military is the fact that man you know, what you got to do, you got to drill down on knowing who you are and what you believe in. And core values and core principles of leadership. Those are vital principles and you know, things such as being a simple person in a complex world, and having the ability to distill and simplify complex issues, and then really create ownership in people which I believe, you know, NSW and the SEAL community has been, that's why we came to him in the first place of, hey, how can we do a better job with athletes and getting them to take ownership in the 21st century, and, you know, for a long time, my niche was, how to coach and lead the 21st century athlete or employee and how it's different and everything else. Well, the reality is, you know, seems like business leaders want to hear from all the special forces, the Navy SEALs, and they read all their stuff and then the SEALs, they want to talk to sports people and everybody else. So it's all cross pollination, Scott, quite frankly, and my job is to help cross pollinate all those core principles. And really, quite frankly, give people a structure that is very strategic, and very intentional in scope, both for at work and at home, but at the same time gives them the freedom to instill their own personalities and their own like Commander's intent. You know, man, everybody has a different job, but the ability to have a structure on how to treat people how to value people, and then how to get the most out of people, you know. A coach's job is to take an individual or a team to a level they can't get to by themselves. And so one of the principles that I teach is, quit being a commander, quit being a manager, quit being a CEO, and start being a coach, think like a coach. And at the end of the day, titles are important, but taking care of your people and getting them to another level is what it's really all about.

Andrew Dow

Rod, that's great points. And I'm actually jotting down some notes here because you know, I'm always alert, right? We're always learning. Everything we do we try to learn something new every day in my point of view. It's interesting how you say we are all cross pollinated and we're doing your vision on how you approach different leadership aspects, whether it's sports, athletes, military, business. Something I'd like to try to aim at, if you're willing, as you know I'm the SOAS Program Manager, and we do SEAL Officer Assessment and Selection. So we are looking at the next generation of SEAL officers who will be coming to hopefully earn a right to be invited to BUD/S and be selected for SEAL training. What we do is every year we get about 200 candidates from Naval Academy different accession sources, Naval Academy, ROTC, OCS, lateral transfers, and something I would love for them to take away from this short little podcast discussion is maybe some guidelines that you can put out there for them to understand or better prepare themselves on expectations on going into the military community, going into the SEAL community, some things that they could work on, and take home with them, and practice and utilize in their day to day that will, you know, maybe make them better, even if it's just one little tidbit that can make them a better person and a better leader for the community in which they'll serve under. Does that make sense?

Rod Olson

Absolutely. And let me give you something simple that that I did as a head coach, and I still teach today. I just taught it yesterday. And when I met with my teams I always told him three things. I did this with my own children too. So it works across the board. And a lot of the guys I trained use it as commanders they use it as CEOs and I used to come in front of my team and you'll appreciate this Andrew, but I'd walk in front of them and I'd say, you know what I play favorites man if you want to be my favorite need to do three things in this program. Number one, you better control your controllables and your biggest controllables are your attitude and your effort man and I'm telling those guys that are coming in that you're talking to and if they're watching this dude I'm telling you want to separate yourself from everybody else have a frickin good attitude, man. Have an attitude that when I was at Oklahoma State our walk-ons used to write YCBM the letters YCBM on their arm their tape everywhere, and it's stood for you can't break me. Man, you can do whatever you want to me, but I'm here, I'm gonna make it I'm gonna find a way. I'm gonna have a smile on my face. I'm gonna work my ass off, you know, and at the end of the day, and I think attitude and effort are massive, regardless of whatever you do. And, you know, it's all about excellence and aiming for perfection. Right, you know, and how you do anything is how you do everything. So I would tell these candidates right now, you know, it's not as you know, this, if you're a world-class warfighter, man, you know, this is what we talk about, you're going to be trying to be world-class and everything, you're gonna want to be a world-class instructor, you want to be a world-class father and world-class husband, that's freaking hard to do, man. But if you can control your controllables, and let go of the uncontrollables, don't worry about the things you can't control the man. Dabo Swinney at Clemson, the head football coach talks about, if you can't let go of your uncontrollables they're gonna end up controlling you. And so as these guys come in just work on your controllables. The second thing I told them if they wanted to be my favorite is you better have a mistake plan, man. And we taught this to our children. It's very applicable. And it's very simple, but man, it is powerful. And it's this simply this there's only three things you can do when you make a mistake, brother, admit it, fix it, and don't repeat it. Man and admit it means take ownership. Don't blame anybody else. We live in a world right now, where everybody's telling you to figure out your own truth and there's no right and wrong and you know, and if you make a mistake, it's somebody else's fault. Don't worry about it, you know, it's like no dude, you gotta own it. So, you got to admit it and then the next thing is fix it and that's usually a technical fix. Like you miss something on the checklist man. Even with pro athletes if they're struggling or something like that they probably are just missing something whether it's the mental game, the physical game, the emotional. It's just a checklist, it was like when you were in the team's Andrew you know, hey, you make a mistake. It's like well you go back through your steps man, what did I miss. So again, admit it fix it and don't repeat it or at flush it right and move on have a short-term memory when it comes to mistakes, but learn. Learn, learn, learn, and then the last thing you know and don't and by the way, don't let those mistakes freakin keep you from being who you are where you want to be. You know, just learn from and keep moving because mistakes is how we learn. Third thing if you want to be a favorite in my world, man, you got to be a we guy not me guy man. You got to be selfless and you got to be a team guy. You've got to you've got to want to have the team come first. And you know in today's world again we live in a world that says it's all about you man. And you know the SEALs and this environment if you're looking for a team if you're looking to be around dudes that you know it's about us not about me and my brother next to me is what this is all about. You know, man, bro, I missed it so much from football. That's what I miss, man. I miss the locker room. I miss the teams and you know I'm fortunate that I still get to be a part of this and I'm around you guys that are Team guys and then I feel like NSW is a team and to me that's it man control your controllables have a mistake plan that you live by, and then be a we guy, not a me guy, man be a star part of something special. That's unique that that involves a team, not just individuals. I get the whole Xbox deal. It's great. It's wonderful. But man, how about getting on a team, a team of guys that's doing something unique and special that nobody in the world is doing. That's what I'm talking about.

Andrew Dow

That's motivation right there. Like those are three great points. And what's so funny is to hear like an expert, like yourself, be able to talk on this. It's like, these are things I know, I've heard and I utilize, and just having you paint that picture clears things up so much. So, I really hope the guys and gals that we come to have at least just to SOAS or do anything in life just follow those three simple things. That's incredible, Ron.

Rod Olson

Hey, you know, you said something really powerful, Andrew. Yeah, I've heard these before. That's exactly right. You know, but we forget. We just kind of get caught up. And we're drinking the Kool Aid, right? That everybody's drinking. You know what, dude, there are many guys out there with a Trident man. And if you want to be one of those people, man, I mean, there's nothing else like it. And I've never been an operator, I'm not a SEAL. But I'm telling you as close as I've been to this community, that it is unique, and it's a special bond. And if you're one of them, it'll change your life, brother.

Andrew Dow

And, you know, I grew up playing sports and sports teams, and I just knew I just love that environment. Because you're all striving for the same goal is to win and become better. And to you know, try to leave your name to where people remember, like, okay, you accomplish what you set yourself out to do. And that's what drove me to the teams, right. It's called the teams which most individuals who come to it are used to that. So, I think that was an upper hand to have, and I look back and I just I miss it every day. And it's just something I'm so thankful to be able to part of this. But to pass forward, what you're, you're teaching right now and reminding us of is very, very special. And I appreciate that, Rod. Scott?

Scott Williams

Yeah, I think it's really so important that we bring in these outside perspectives from Naval Special Warfare, to do that kind of teaching. We can get caught in an echo chamber, where we kind of listen to each other. And that I think, stunts growth, bringing in someone like Rod to kind of go over the tried-and-true principles of leadership, and helping us understand each other and figuring out new ways to progress, to not just be leaders but to be teammates, and to help be better humans. I think it is fundamental to being better operators.

Rod Olson

Absolutely. And Scott, you know, we've got a saying, with the tribes and the people of I run with man. If you're jacked up at home, you'll be jacked up at work eventually. And if you're jacked up at work, eventually it'll get you at home. And so, what I help people do, and what I think that NSW is really working towards too is valuing the people at a high level, you know, because the suicide rates and everything else right now that we're dealing with after all the combat and everything else is just you know, and it's not just NSW, right, it's worldwide, and to get back to really valuing people, developing people, teammates that are going to keep your whole to have your back and take care. Yeah, and at the same time, in all this, you know, at the end of the day, we've got to make sure we don't assume resilience, but we are developing the best warfighters in the world for a cause, you know, not just to get a Trident. This is to keep our country, you know, to be the greatest country in the world at the end of the day. And so, it's a calling too, it's not just a gig, it's not just a Trident.

Scott Williams

Yeah, I agree. Rod, we've got just a few minutes left. I want you to think about this for a second and let us know, to our audience members out there, to the kid who's in high school right now who's thinking about becoming a Navy SEAL or a SWCC someday or a SEAL officer. What are the things that they can start working on now to sort of condition themselves to become future members of this community from your perspective?

Rod Olson

Yeah, well, and again, I appreciate you asking the question, but I think guys like Andrew and people that are in the teams would have a way better perspective than I but I appreciate the question and I'll honor it as best I can here. My oldest son is a mental conditioning coordinator for a pro baseball for a team that I won't name. But he spends a lot of time with the 18-year-olds and the 22-year-olds in the minor league system, and he and I talk an awful lot. And he's a lot smarter than I am, he's got a Ph.D., and I've just got a PE degree, but he's seeing some things that he and I both are seeing. And that is, it's sad, you know, we're seeing a lot of young men and people that it's all about them individually and it's all about them finding their truth. And they're not relying on team members. And one of the reasons I think football and games like that are you have to you rely on your teammates, man, and that makes you a different human, you know, and it makes you a better human, because I can't do it by myself, I have to have some I'm not slamming individual sports or whatever. But I'm just saying that the biggest thing they can do right now to separate themselves is number one, play team sports. You know, and track is not a team sport. I mean, you're on a team, but it's like, unless you're doing the relay, right, you need to be a part of and find ways to put yourself in situations where you have to rely on other people. But more importantly, they have to rely on you. And even jobs, go work jobs where people have to rely on you, that's gonna get you ready to be a great teammate in the teams, you know, and you Hey, you got to take care of your own stuff, right? You got to control your controllables ownership of what you got to do, you got to do your job, but at the same time, and learn how to be a great teammate, put yourself in situations where you have to rely on other people, and they have to rely on you. It's not just about watching YouTube videos and going to NSW and getting ready. You know, I mean, you got to understand that, that, you know, the guys that I talked to Scott and Andrew, that that have been in this, you know, people like Admiral Mark Schaefer, and Rear Admiral Keith Davids, and all these guys that I've seen move up now, and they were around when there wasn't as much war right back in the day, and then the Trident and, and being on the teams was meant so much right, and it still does, but we got to shift our focus from me, me, me to us, us, us. So, I would challenge those kids. You want to separate yourself and take yourself as a man and a human to a whole other level as a person. Start thinking team, team, team, and how can I help the team right. It's the old JFK thing, it's not what your country can do for you, it's what you can do for your country. All that stuff, man. Sorry, get on a soapbox. But I get excited because I love what the SEALs stand for man. I just love it.

Scott Williams

Well, Rod. That's some great wisdom. I know that it took me some time, well into my 20's, before I realized that the wisdom of my parents was actually true, and they actually knew things and maybe I was a little too hot-headed, not paying attention. But wisdom goes a long way. We appreciate yours today. Thank you for joining us. Andrew, also, thank you for jumping in here with me and providing your perspective. That's going to do it for this time. I'm Scott Williams, the host of 'The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday', the official Navy SEAL podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode, and we look forward to having you listen again the next time. Thank you, gentlemen.

Andrew Dow

Thanks, Scott. Take care. Thanks, Rod.